Roger M. Wilcox's review of

The Concorde: Airport '79

Since a review of
Airport '77 was already available here on Bad Movie Night, I decided
to follow up with a review of the last, and worst, of the Airport cadre
of airliner disaster movies.

Not to be contented with the mere 747 jumbo jets of the second and third
Airport movies, The Concorde: Airport '79 centers around ... wait
for it ... a Concorde. Not a British Airways concorde. Not an Air France
concorde. A generic concorde. The plane just says "Concorde" on the
side, with no other distinguishing markings.

You see, an American corporation — which apparently owns everything in
the whole world — just bought the Concorde and is taking posession of it
at Dulles airfield in Washington, DC. They can get away with this because it's
1979, and Dulles airport still allowed Concordes to take off and land from it
back then. But on the landing attempt, the air traffic controllers somehow fail
to see a hot-air balloon drift out over the runway (presumably because its
blinding airspeed of 3 miles per hour is too fast for the human eye to follow),
and the Concorde has to hit full throttle and climb out so it doesn't run into
the balloon — even when the balloon is 200 feet above the runway
and the Concorde is already below it.

At this point, the VHS cassette of The Concorde: Airport '79 I'd rented
started to lose tracking and display a vertically-flickering picture. I watched
the rest of the movie in this blurred fashion. In retrospect, I don't think I
missed anything.

Now, it turns out that the head of this world-owning corporation has made some
underhanded weapons sales to the U.S.'s enemies. His girlfriend even gets her
hands on documents showing these transactions, with the corporate head's
signature on them. (A closeup inspection of these documents in freeze-frame
mode, which canceled out my VCR's tracking problems, showed such entries as
"12 gauge shotguns" and "375 magnums". You gun enthusiasts out there know that
these aren't military weapons, they're guns designed primarily for civilian
self-defense — and that the props hack didn't know how to spell ".357
magnum" correctly. Also notice that such minor details as the number of
weapons, and the sales price, were completely missing from these invoices. But
I digress.)
So, if your girlfriend has evidence that could destroy you, what do you do?
That's right. You reprogram a new experimental anti-aircraft missile —
which your company owns, and which will receive so much bad press from any
test-firing mishaps that it would probably bankrupt your company in real life
— to shoot down the new Concorde (which your company ALSO owns) while
your girlfriend is on board it.

Oh, and did I mention that Jimmy "Dy-No-Mite" Walker and Charro will also be
aboard? No? Good. Then I don't have to mention that George Kennedy will once
again be repirising his role as the pilot. (The Airport movies just
can't seem to get enough of him. He immortalizes this film with the line "They
don't call this a cockpit for nothing, sweetheart.") Or that the Soviet olympic
team and a desperately needed heart transplant are on board, too.

So, the Concorde takes off, Jimmy Walker locks himself in the bathroom to smoke
marijuana, the experimental missile fires, and the villainous corporate boss
secretly reprograms it to hit the Concorde. But he wasn't counting on George
Kennedy's championship aerobatic flying, and after a few barrel rolls that
should have caused no end of trouble with the plane's many gravity-dependent
systems, they manage to evade the missile long enough for Air Force chase
planes to catch up and shoot it down. (Oh, and I should mention that the stunt
crew seems to think that when a plane turns left, everything in it gets pulled
to the right, like it does when a car makes a turn. In a real plane, no such
thing happens. The plane banks, so the only thing the passengers and cargo
should feel is a little increase in weight.)

Our passengers and crew then breathe a sigh of relief, but it is short-lived.
The evil corporate boss has connections with another evil corporate boss living
in France, who owns his own fighter plane. Now our intrepid Generic Concorde
crew must deal with an enemy armed not with one, but with four heat-seeking
missiles. They evade the first one, but the co-pilot (who has almost as much
military training as George Kennedy but talks funny) mentions that "one more
maneuver like that last one and the plane could fall apart". (Funny he didn't
say anything the first 3 times Kennedy executed a barrel roll.) So what can our
Captain do? What else. Open the window at 60,000 feet and fire a flare gun to
give the heat-seeking missile a false target. I swear I'm not making this up.
He puts on an oxygen mask, deliberately blows the cabin pressure, opens a side
window in the cockpit (I had no idea airliner windows were removable in
flight), sticks his head out into the oncoming supersonic air, and fires
a flare JUST at the right time to decoy the second missile away — but not
far enough away to keep its detonation from "hitting their hydraulic lines".
Unfortunately, now, his flare gun is "jammed". (How does a breach-loading gun
"jam" anyway?) He needs some other way to get the 3rd and 4th heat-seeking
missiles off his tail. So, he shuts down the plane's engines, which INSTANTLY
causes them to cool off so that the missiles will lose their tracking. But now,
since the special-effects crew doesn't seem to know that a plane can glide
without engine power, the Concorde plummets downward, nose-first, at about a
zillion feet per minute. Can they get their engines restarted in time? Can they
land safely with their brake hydraulics out and half of their reverse-thrusters
damaged? Can the amateur pilots in the audience hold their lunch down until
they do?

Well, they make it. But we can't leave the theater yet. They have to continue
their flight to Moscow the following afternoon. Yep, after stressing the hull
through multiple barrel rolls, and getting both the hydraulic lines and the
reverse-thrusters damaged, one days' worth of repairs will make the Concorde
good as new. And none of the passengers will even THINK about taking a
different plane. Oh, and our intrepid corporate girlfriend isn't going to spill
the beans about his illegal activities until she reaches Moscow, so he'll have
another chance to eliminate her while she's flying on the Concorde. This time,
though, he'll be more insidious, and blow the plane up by opening its luggage
compartment. This is a jet that can withstand supersonic speeds, multiple
barrel rolls, near-misses by air-to-air missiles, and rapid cabin
depressurization, but not an open cargo hold.

But our evil corporate boss once again underestimates the tenacious
resourcefullness of over-the-hill George Kennedy. He's going to try and land
the Concorde in a snowfield in the alps before it completely tears itself
apart. The snowfield is plowed flat in 8 minutes by an alert Ski Patrol (!),
the music gets really loud and dramatic, Kennedy shoves the Concorde down below
about 10 feet of snow, ...

And ...

In a twist of fate too horrific for words ...

... Everybody makes it out of the plane safely. The Russian olympic team does
not die. Jimmy Walker does not die. Charro does not die. David Warner, whose
acting contract requires him to die in every movie he's in, does not die. And
George Kennedy does not die. The tragedy here is just too great for words. My
eyes still fill with tears remembering it.

In its defense, I will say that this movie isn't quite as bad as Starflight
One: The Plane that Couldn't Land. But just barely. Go rent
Airplane! instead and have some good clean fun.